More than a third of the city of Shelton remained without power through most of the day Thursday, and with overnight temperatures starting to drop, emergency management officials decided to extend the hours of its emergency shelter.
The shelter, in the Community Center at 41 Church St., will now be open 24/7. In addition, until 10 p.m. residents can get meals ready to eat, ice, and water at Echo Hose Ambulance headquarters at 100 Meadow St.
“As the temperatures start to drop, our sheltering needs could escalate dramatically,” John Millo, the city’s direction of emergency management, said Thursday afternoon. “I would not expect the bulk of (the city) back on possibly until the latter part of the weekend.”
As of about 5 p.m. United Illuminating reported on its website that about 6,421 of its customers in Shelton were without power, or 36.83 percent of the city. The number stayed static throughout Thursday.
Generators and chainsaws hummed throughout the city Thursday as residents began in earnest to clean up from the damage wrought by the storm.
But in many spots, where trees, wires, or utility poles have been damaged, residents have to play a waiting game for crews from United Illuminating to perform work — clearing low-hanging wires, trees leaning on power lines, or fallen utility poles, for example.
On Lynne Terrace, for instance, a snapped utility pole leaned precariously on the road, with a downed tree sagging the power lines nearby.
Geri Jeanette, who lives nearby, said a UI crew had since come by to put in a new utility pole, but she hasn’t seen anyone else since.
Click play on the video below to see Jeanette talk about the damage.
Nearby, Soundcrest Drive resident Tom Harbinson, who is also the chairman of the city’s conservation commission, said the company could be doing more to let residents know what to expect.
“I know more about what’s going on in New York City at all my construction sites than in my own neighborhood,” he said. “It’s just a lack of knowing what’s going in is what’s frustrating a lot of people.”
The close-knit neighborhood has banded together to help each other out in cleaning up the damage, he said.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Harbinson said. “Nobody was injured here.”
Click the play button below to see more of Harbinson’s remarks.
In the Fairchild Heights mobile home park off Bridgeport Avenue, a downed tree and transformer blocked a road inside the park and has blocked a route out for about eight families, including Bob and Gail Koether, who said they aren’t happy with the utility company’s response.
The Koethers have power, unlike about half of the rest of the mobile home park, and know that others have it worse off, but said they’re concerned because some of their elderly neighbors need to get out to make doctor’s appointments and pick up medications.
“I know you have people in worse shape than we are,” Gail Koether said. “Just move the tree.”
“We’ve been stuck here since Monday,” Bob Koether said. “All we’re asking is for them to remove the tree.”
At one house on Mustang Drive, two Jeeps were crushed by tree which fell onto a driveway during the height of the storm.
Jeff Orton, a resident of the house, said the vehicles are owned by his landlord, who are waiting for a tree removal company to clean up.
They might be in for a wait, with tree companies in suddenly high demand.
“It’ll probably be about a week or two, they’re saying,” Orton said.
The situation was similar in the White Hills section of the city, where low-hanging wires forced cars to slalom back and forth across Longfellow Drive, which was closed at its intersection with East Village Road Thursday.
Crews were on scene working on cleanup, but how long it would take to get power restored to the area, where snapped utility poles and downed wires seemed to be everywhere, is another question.
“I don’t know how long we’re going to be in for this,” said Faith Hack, a Longfellow Road resident. “Unbelievable.”
Hack said she knows she’s fortunate to not have it as bad as residents of the New Jersey shore or New York City and is doing what she can without electricity.
“I’m reading a great book now — by a lantern,” she said. “I can’t really complain, because some people have it so much worse.”
Back at City Hall, Jimmy Morrissey, a representative from United Illuminating, told the city’s emergency management team at a 2 p.m. meeting that the utility company had four crews working in Shelton.
One crew is a “make safe” crew that is de-energizing downed lines and clear trees off wires. The three other crews were working on restoring power.
Despite the long wait for some in the city, Millo said Shelton was in better shape than a lot of other municipalities.
“We’re doing better than most,” he said.
“We’ve seen it from the other side, we’ve seen it where it was poor,” he said, referring to the utility company’s roundly criticized response to two storms last year.
“From what we’re dealing with here — a major storm that probably had the intensity equal to the 1938 hurricane — UI has done a remarkable job in responding to the needs of the city of Shelton,” Millo said.
He said the two UI representatives to Shelton’s emergency management team have been doing all that they can to address the city’s needs.
“They’ve gone above and beyond what their protocol is and they’re working very diligently in making sure the city of Shelton’s residents are getting as much bang for their buck as they can in these restoration efforts,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the delay in getting the restoration done is everything has to be made safe first before they can start restoration,” Millo went on. “That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. You can’t start restoring power to one area when another area hasn’t been made safe because you’re going to fry somebody.”
“We were almost 10,000 people the day of the storm,” Millo said. “We’re now down close to 50 percent of what that was. We do have three restoration crews in town that are working and are working until 8 o’clock every evening.”
Morrissey said the company is doing what it can with the resources available in town.
UI made restoring power to the 10 “town priorities” like firehouses and schools its first aim, he said, and all of those buildings were online within 48 hours of the storm.
In addition, he said, during the storm, the company sent crews to locations where transformers on fire were threatening houses.
“They rolled a crew out even in the middle of the storm,” he said. “They did that at least at two locations where houses could have burned down.”
“We really focused on public safety first,” he said. “Now we’re doing the arduous task of getting everyone’s power turned back on.”
One resident stayed at the shelter in the Community Center on Church street overnight, said Joe Laucella, the assistant chief at Echo Hose Ambulance, and about a dozen were there as late as midnight for showers or to charge phones.
A “steady flow” of residents have visited the ambulance corps’ headquarters on Meadow Street for meals ready to eat, ice, and water, he said.
Shelton Fire Department Chief Fran Jones said about a dozen people from the Pine Rock Park neighborhood visited the firehouse on Long Hill Road for similar reasons.
Jones said fire crews have also been responding with paramedics to calls in areas of the city without power. He urged residents with generators to be careful when refueling them and to be mindful of carbon monoxide issues when using them.
And when residents do get power back, Jones said, they should be sure to check the electrical boxes in their homes to make sure there wasn’t any damage that could cause a problem. He said fire crews have responded to a handful of calls for people reporting an odor of smoke inside their houses after they get power back.
One bright spot: Jones said Wednesday night’s Halloween party at the Pine Rock Park Fire Department was an “overwhelming success.” Police Chief Joel Hurliman said there were no injuries during trick or treating throughout town, and “not much mischief.”
Millo advised residents to call the city’s Emergency Operations Center at 203 – 924-5941 to report problems. After hours, they should call the Police Department at 203 – 924-1544.
He said he expects representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be touring the area in the coming days, so residents with storm damage to their homes should register that damage with city officials in order to be eligible for reimbursement if possible. Information about how to do so will be posted soon on the city’s website, he said.
